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Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Bringing New Meaning to Scary Parenting

I was blessed with a pretty cool gift. Usually I'm in Dream Land within minutes after my head hits the pillow. My DH can attest to the fact that I fall asleep most evenings while we try to watch an episode of this show or that on DVD. Sadly, I haven't slept well at all this week. I'm deeply troubled and traumatized by the situation in our 3 year old daughter's pre-school. This is our 3rd year with the pre-school as our son was there for 2 years and 3 year old daughter has been there until now. It has been a rough year dealing with a difficult population of parents. There have been many incidences of parents verbally attacking our teachers - the latest incident occurred on Sunday when a grandmother entered the school and called our teachers, "Nazis" and told our helper to "drop dead", then she attacked one of the children and screamed in her ear. The teachers were both left in shambles, sobbing, and even saying that they can't take it anymore. I'm horrified to admit that my daughter has seen and heard behavior that is very damaging to a young child. I've taken the time to come and observe both inside and outside of the pre-school. There are 4 children who exhibit consistent disturbed behavior and violent outbursts. Though I am worried, I have been constantly assured that everything is under control and the violent children are receiving the help that they need.

While I respect the teachers, some of the parents are scary and possibly dangerous. I believe that a number of them must be physically and verbally abusing their children at home because their behavior reflects it and I'm scared of them! As I was preparing to leave the premises yesterday morning, one of the problematic mothers, who, in the past I have witnessed screaming at our teachers, accosted me and began shouting at me and accusing me because she wrongly thought I was "against" the mother who has been abusing our teacher all year. Two other mothers joined in and began yelling at me. I was shocked by the language they used so freely next to young children and equally appalled by their lack of reason and respect. After mulling it over, it's obvious that I can't leave my daughter in a place where such abuse occurs daily. These feelings arose even before I found out that one of the parents has threatened a teacher with a gun, and a different father (who is in prison) threatened a teacher. We need an armed guard to protect the school from crazy parents. As long as the problematic parents have access to my child, I am worried for our safety.

I'm one of many parents. I'm the 4th in line to pull our child out... and I'm guessing more will follow. It's very sad. The teacher called me and told me that I'm wrong for letting the "bad parents" win. She said, "We need children from good homes to make the pre-school better." Why should I leave my child in a school that the teacher doesn't want to be? Sorry, I can't stick around to make your jungle a better place....